DOJ, FBI find no evidence Epstein was murdered, kept ‘client list'
The conclusion is in line with numerous prior evaluations after Epstein was found dead in his prison cell.
Nonetheless, the conclusion comes after President Trump has tapped leaders for the FBI — including its deputy director, Dan Bongino — who have promoted conspiracy theories about his death.
'After a thorough investigation, FBI investigators concluded that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City on August 10, 2019. This conclusion is consistent with previous findings,' the memo states.
The FBI said it enhanced footage of the area where Epstein was housed and saw no one enter or leave the cell block.
'The conclusion that Epstein died by suicide is further supported by video footage from the common area of the Special Housing Unit (SHU) where Epstein was housed at the time of his death,' it states.
'As DOJ's Inspector General explained in 2023, anyone entering or attempting to enter the tier where Epstein's cell was located from the SHU common area would have been captured by this footage. The FBI's independent review of this footage confirmed that from the time Epstein was locked in his cell at around 10:40 pm on August 9, 2019, until around 6:30 am the next morning, nobody entered any of the tiers in the SHU.'
The memo also addressed accusations that Epstein, the financier who was facing sex trafficking charges, kept a client list he could use for blackmail.
Amid a feud with Trump, Elon Musk said the president was on that list. Trump has denied having a close relationship with Epstein.
'This systematic review revealed no incriminating 'client list.' There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,' the memo states.
FBI Director Kash Patel had previously called for releasing a list of Epstein's associates.
The memo otherwise said it does not plan to release further information from the files so as to not release personal details about those affected by Epstein's actions.
Bongino while on Fox News last month said after reviewing the files he did not believe Epstein was killed.
'He killed himself,' Bongino said. 'I've seen the whole file.'
That's a different tune than Bongino struck in 2023.
'Listen, that Jeffrey Epstein story is a big deal, please do not let that story go. Keep your eye on this,' he said at the time.
The release of the memo is the latest effort by Trump officials to address a case long of interest to many in MAGA circles.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House officials earlier this year invited interested parties to review a binder full of records on the matter.
But the move backfired, sparking criticism for revealing no new information about the case.
The latest memo is also unlikely to satisfy MAGA allies focused on Epstein's death.
Conservative commentator Bennie Johnson complained the footage did not show all the necessary details.
'The recently released Epstein security footage is missing a full minute,' he wrote on X.
—Updated at 2:24 p.m. EDT
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
6 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Senate votes to confirm Trump's defense lawyer Emil Bove to a U.S. appeals court
WASHINGTON — The Senate on a party-line vote on Tuesday confirmed Emil J. Bove, President Trump's defense lawyer and loyal ally atop the Justice Department, to a lifetime seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. The vote was 49 to 50. Bove, 44, was a highly controversial judicial nominee, not because of his legal views, but because he led a purge of prosecutors and FBI agents who had worked on cases growing out of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Before this year, the Justice Department held to a tradition of keeping politics out of law enforcement. But Bove and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi saw their missions as carrying out the wishes of President Trump, including his plans for retribution against the prosecutors and investigators who brought charges against him or the 1,500 Trump allies who stormed the Capitol and fought with police. In the first weeks of Trump's second term, Bove served as the acting head of the Justice Department before Bondi was confirmed by the Senate. Bove also ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop bribery and corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams. The move prompted several of them to resign over what they saw as an unethical deal to win the mayor's cooperation in the administration's plan to round up immigrants who are in the country illegally. Bove also played a key role in the new administration's clash with a federal judge over deporting Venezuelans to a brutal prison in El Salvador. A former Justice Department attorney-turned-whistleblower said Bove told government lawyers they should ignore orders from the judge who sought to halt the deportations. When Bove appeared before a Senate committee as a judicial nominee, he said he had been misunderstood and unfairly criticized. 'I am not an enforcer' or 'anybody's henchman,' he said. Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche, who partnered with Bove in defending Trump last year, said he had been smeared by unfair criticism. 'Emil is the most capable and principled lawyer I have ever known,' he wrote in a Fox News opinion column. Democrats said Bove did not deserve a promotion to the federal courts. Sen. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) described Bove as a partisan loyalist who served Trump as 'the instrument of his vengeance.' 'When Trump wanted to purge the department of prosecutors who had proved to juries beyond a reasonable doubt that the violent offenders who attacked police officers that day did so to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power, Emil Bove was there to punish not the criminals, but the prosecutors,' Schiff said in opposing the nomination. On Tuesday, Bove was called a 'diligent, capable and fair jurist' by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), according to the Associated Press. Bove is not likely to have much influence on the 3rd Circuit Court. Its 14 judges hear appeals from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Bove has no experience as a judge and has not written on legal or constitutional issues. However, if Justices Clarence Thomas or Samuel A. Alito were to retire in the next three years, Trump could nominate him to the Supreme Court. His nomination drew an unusually broad opposition from the legal community. In a July 15 letter to the Senate, 80 former and retired judges said confirming Bove to a life-term judgeship undercuts the rule of law and respect for the federal courts. They said his 'egregious record of mistreating law enforcement officers, abusing power and disregarding the law itself disqualifies him for this position.' More than 900 former Justice Department attorneys signed a letter to the Senate saying 'it is intolerable to us that anyone who disgraces the Justice Department would be promoted to one of the highest courts in the land.' Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, became the first Republican to declare her opposition to his nomination. 'We have to have judges who will adhere to the rule of law and the Constitution and do so regardless of what their personal views may be,' she said in a statement. 'Mr. Bove's political profile and some of the actions he has taken in his leadership roles at the Department of Justice cause me to conclude he would not serve as as impartial jurist. Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska were the only Republicans to vote against Bove.
New York Times
7 minutes ago
- New York Times
Thailand and Cambodia Stepped Back From War, but Their Temple Fight Remains
It took days of cajoling and pressure from the United States, China and Malaysia — and a threat from President Trump — to get Thailand and Cambodia to come together to work out their two nations' deadliest border conflict in decades. That was the easy part. On Tuesday, the Thai and Cambodian militaries agreed to implement a cease-fire. Both sides said that they would not deploy more troops to their contested border, bringing a tenuous peace after rocket launches, airstrikes and shelling that killed dozens and forced more than 300,000 people to flee their homes. But questions remain about how long the lull can last. A key issue that brought the two neighbors to arms is their most intractable dispute: who can lay claim to the centuries-old Hindu temples along the border, dating back to the ancient Khmer Empire. Trust has seldom been in evidence between the two neighbors, and it has in no way been repaired after this latest violence. A personal feud between their de facto leaders has only added to the tensions. On Wednesday and late on Tuesday, the Thai Army continued to accuse the Cambodian forces of starting gunfights. Cambodia rejected the accusations as false, saying that they 'dangerously threaten the fragile trust and dialogue essential for lasting peace.' 'The problem in that area is that almost anything could provoke hostilities,' said Charles A. Ray, who was the U.S. ambassador to Cambodia from 2003 to 2005. 'No one has really gotten the two sides in a rooms, have them sit down and really discuss: 'What do both sides gain by fighting over a temple on a mountain?'' Officials will next meet on Monday, to work out how to maintain a cease-fire, including by having Malaysian observers monitor it. That step is seen as crucial: A plan to introduce Indonesian observers after the last major deadly border clash in 2011 never panned out. Reported sites of attacks and fighting since July 24 Sources: Cambodian and Thai officials, local news reports. Note: Locations where fighting was in dispute between the two nations are not shown. By Agnes Chang, Sun Narin, Kittiphum Sringammuang and Sui-Lee Wee The mood remained resigned and uncertain in evacuation centers in Thailand and Cambodia on Tuesday. In Thailand, the authorities have told more than 180,000 evacuees to stay put just in case. In Surin, Pa Srakaeo, 58, a rice farmer, said that she was not hopeful about returning home soon. 'It's probably 50-50.' For there to be an enduring peace, both countries need to resolve the dispute over how their 500-mile-long border should be demarcated. One major sticking point is Thailand's insistence that all discussions must to be done bilaterally. It has refused to recognize the 1962 ruling by the International Court of Justice that the Preah Vihear temple falls within the sovereignty of Cambodia. It argues that both countries should stick to a 2000 memorandum of understanding that states that both sides agreed to jointly survey and define the areas together. But they have been talking for years with little progress. Notably, they can't even agree on what maps they should use. Cambodia uses a 1:200,000-scale map, which is equivalent to giving someone a small and simple drawing of an area that gives a general layout but is not very precise. This map was drawn by French surveyors when Cambodia was a French colony and was used by the I.C.J. in its 1962 ruling. Thailand uses a 1:50,000-scale map — like the U.S. military — like a much bigger and highly detailed blueprint of a street in which every house and tree can be seen. Thailand says this map reflects the actual terrain. This issue is such an inflammatory one that the Thai government spokesman, Jirayu Houngsub, took pains to reject Thai media reports that Thailand would agree to use Cambodia's 1:200,000-scale map in the cease-fire talks. 'No government or individual would ever sell out their own country,' Mr. Houngsub said. Mr. Ray, the former U.S. ambassador, said he had once suggested to someone in Cambodia that both sides should come up with a joint commission that monitors the comings and goings in these areas, like the Demilitarized Zone, the strip of land that divides the Korean Peninsula. 'It didn't exactly go over big,' he said. 'You have a hard time getting through to them. It's almost an irrationally emotional issue.' Cambodia argues that temples like Preah Vihear, known as Phra Viharn in Thailand, and Prasat Ta Moan Thom, known as Prasat Ta Muen Thom in Thailand, are deeply significant to Cambodian identity as the descendants of the Khmer kings who built them. Thailand sees the Phra Viharn /Preah Vihear temple complex as theirs because it is more easily accessible from the Thai side of the border. More broadly, the temples have been seized on by the country's ultranationalists as 'lost territories,' ceded by Siam to French Indochina during the French colonial era. The border dispute has also been a convenient way for Thai political factions to target each other under the guise of nationalism. 'The problem is, once the conflict started, then nationalism became much more extreme,' said Ou Virak, president of Future Forum, a think tank in Phnom Penh dedicated to public policy issues. 'And then people made out that these zones were worth dying for.'
UPI
7 minutes ago
- UPI
Emil Bove appointed to appellate court despite whistleblowers
1 of 3 | Emil Bove, attorney for former President Donald Trump, sits in the courtroom at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York on Thursday, May 2, 2024. Trump's trial is entering it's third week on charges he allegedly falsified business records to cover up a sex scandal during the 2016 presidential campaign. Pool photo by Jeenah Moon/UPI | License Photo July 30 (UPI) -- The U.S. Senate on Tuesday narrowly approved Emil Bove, who served as President Donald Trump's personal defense attorney, for a lifetime judicial appointment despite facing multiple whistleblower complaints. Bove was confirmed as a judge on the Philadelphia-based Third Circuit Court of Appeals on a 50-49 vote, with Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins voting with Democrats against him. Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee was absent. The vote follows one of the most heated sets of Senate hearings on any of Trump's judicial nominees. Three whistleblowers alleged that Bove, a high-ranking Justice Department official, misled lawyers and pressed career prosecutors to ignore court orders to advance Trump's political goals. Bove has denied the allegations, calling them "partisan attacks." Sen. Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in an X post that Bove was "a terrible choice for the federal bench." "Mr. Bove's primary qualification appears to be his blind loyalty to this president," Durbin wrote. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chair of the committee, responded during a floor speech saying Democrats' attacks on Bove were unfair and he saw no evidence of misconduct. "Since the very beginning of this Congress, Democrats have engaged in a relentless obstruction campaign for nearly every one of President Trump's nominees," he said. The first whistleblower complaint was filed by Erez Reuveni, a now fired Department of Justice lawyer, who accused Bove of directing the Trump administration to disregard a court order to stop deporting migrants to a Salvadoran prison. A second complaint from an unnamed Department of Justice attorney backs up the first, claiming that Bove and other officials were "actively and deliberately undermining the rule of law." As the Senate neared its final vote on the nomination, a third whistleblower complaint accused Bove of misleading lawmakers when he denied pressing prosecutors to help broker the dismissal of the corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams, reports The Washington Post. Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated Bove's confirmation in a post on X. "This is a GREAT day for out country," she said, while thanking him for "his tireless work and support" at the Justice Department. "He will be missed -- and he will be an outstanding judge," she said.
